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Chapter Text

Anaxagoras could measure his life in grains of sand. 

Sun blazed down on Dawncloud. The ground felt unsteady; his vision weaved and ebbed every few minutes. A migraine pulsed at the base of his skull. Sometimes, a strange, salty taste flooded his mouth. The River of Souls called to him, and his body screamed, and he kept walking and laughing and smirking as if all was fine. There was no relief, except when Kephale’s shadow sliced through the sun and created blissful shade. That was all Titans were good for, really – brief moments of reprieve. 

“Rude.” The voice in his brain didn’t sound all that miffed. 

Anaxagoras rolled his shoulders back for the thousandth time, struggling for pristine posture. “I’m right, Cerces.”

His guide shot him a puzzled stare. “Professor?”

“Ignore me.”

His heartbeat pumped in his ears, loud and insistent and unsteady, like a device on the brink of failure and screaming for maintenance before the end. He tried to keep his eye on the horizon and his new mission. Play the part. Be the actor. Step onto the stage and redirect them until everything falls into place. 

Aglaea would be there, too. 

Anaxagoras desperately shunted that little detail from his mind. Frankly, with all the other things going horribly, terribly wrong in his body, keeping the Goldweaver from his thoughts should’ve been easy. He didn’t know whether to attribute the fact that it wasn’t that simple to the woman herself, the damnable Coreflame of Mnestia, or his dying body rifling through every single possible drawer in his catalogue of thoughts. 

“You seem to be avoiding that ‘Goldweaver’ person.”

Anaxagoras considered it a mark of his extremely high intellect and self control that he didn’t react to Cerces’ badgering. Either the Titan saw his silence as insolent (possible) or she knew the question made him nervous (also possible, but worse), and so, naturally, in the vein of all of her terrible ilk, she pressed the issue. 

“Why don't you address her face to face?"

Because I cannot stand her devotion to Titans. Because she is all that I hold contempt for. Because she is an ice block of a woman. Because she likely has ground her humanity into a stump and is barely better than you, Cerces. 

Because she is truly intelligent and beautiful, because I do not trust myself to think of her that way from my own thoughts, because I fear something about Mnestia takes a hold of me every time I look at her. 

Because I want to hear her thoughts on everything. I want to debate her. I want to know her intellectual pathways like I do my own. I want to be challenged by her. 

Because every time she and I really get into it, I’m hard as a rock for hours afterwards, and I would very much like her not to realize that. 

"I have nothing to talk about with her,” Anaxagoras snipped. And then, because he truly couldn’t help himself from being snide, he added, “Since you're in my brain, you can look for the reason yourself."

Cerces made a single, long, thoughtful sound, and Anaxagoras realized with dawning horror that the Titan in his brain was not , in fact, above doing just that. 

"Oh... the leader of the Flame Chase Journey and a demigod of Mnestia... "

Anaxagoras nearly choked. Detour her. Detour her. For the love of all reason, get her to stop. "You're really searching through my brain? What are you treating it as? Some sort of toy?"

Apparently Cerces was too much like him. She wasn’t deterred by something as simple as social niceties. She was in his brain, practically in an ‘all-you-can-read’ buffet of his thoughts, no doubt she would take advantage when goaded. But she did him one favor and spared outlining his thoughts too pointedly. “Regardless, you think quite highly of her, no? "

"That's... because I'm a teacher, who... grades everyone fairly." 

Perfect. He was Anaxagoras, one of the Seven Sages of the Grove of Epiphany, Founder of the Nousporists, the Blasphemer, the Great Performer, and that was the worst lie of his life. 

To his incalculable relief, Cerces did not comment. Neither did his guide, who no doubt was deeply unnerved by all this strange muttering. 

Dawncloud’s center was relentlessly bright and hot. The citizens were gathered already. Anaxagoras cast one glance at the amphitheater seats, and– ah . There she was. Golden and pale and beautiful, unseeing eyes staring into nothingness, arms folded, the pretty bow of her mouth set in a thin line. Aglaea, Goldweaver, the woman who enraged and haunted him at the same time, the reason he never, never, never could find anyone else. 

The shambling corpse of his body tried to fall apart just at the sight of her. 

“ Can you manage? ”

Anaxagoras didn’t grace Cerces with a response. Aglaea didn’t know what he had up his sleeves (though she no doubt suspected something from him). Her assessments of him were always terribly uncharitable. He didn’t care what anyone else thought. 

(Anyone but her, that was.)

He squared his shoulders and fixed his eye on Kephale. Very well. If he was performing for an audience, so long as Aglaea’s attention was on him, he would give the best show of their lives. 

—

Anaxagoras could measure his life in fractions. 

Every tendon in his body screamed. What could one describe a Coreflame as that didn’t induce an eye-rolling comparison? Flame was in the name. His insides felt like lava, like a molten secret in his stomach, like a disease crawling up through his open mouth. The River of Souls screamed in his ears; dark, deep river soil clogged his nose. 

He was right. His Proof was right . His entire life hinged on a glorious second, a fragment of Knowing , and that was all that really mattered. He could die in whatever horrible way ripping a Coreflame from his body would kill him (probably painfully, count on the Titans to ensure that) and die happily. 

But Aglaea stood beside him in the Vortex of Genesis, and they were alone. 

This, he supposed, was a very, very, very good bonus. 

They talked. Not all of it registered; his brain had transformed into a starving animal, thrashing in its cage, aware Death crept in on icy limbs and waited. But they talked about Phainon. They talked about her. They talked about the Flame Chase Journey. 

"Congratulations are in order,” Aglaea mused, a tiny edge of sarcasm on her tongue. “We've found common ground at the very end of our destined paths."

He wanted to kiss her and let that barb split his mouth wide open. 

He settled for matching her energy. "When you put it that way, it makes me want to take back what I said.”

And then Aglaea shot him a look that screamed, no, you don’t , and he wanted to be perverse and argumentative and commit one final act of blasphemy against all the Titans assembled. If only there were time. Wouldn’t she look so beautiful, clothes drenched, head dipped back into the basin, her knees draped over his hips and thighs spread wide? A last, beautiful desecration. 

But the course was fixed, here, at the end of his destiny, and he contented himself with looking at her instead. 

—

Death at the hands of a Coreflame was every bit what he thought it might be. 

Perhaps there was an advantage to putting his dying body through its paces during this last week. Intellectually, Anaxagoras knew it must hurt. But his body disintegrated as Cerces left him, and all his could feel was relief. No more migraine, no more splintering bones, no more bile and dirt and salt in his throat, no more agonizing heat and horrible nausea. He observed his own death like he had so many other things in life – laughing, like a scholar, with wide-eyed curiosity. The synapses in his brain came unhinged and drifted, clawing for awareness. Like falling into a dream , he thought, and half expected Cerces to reply. 

Ah. No. No, his thoughts were his own. 

And then came all the memories. 

He was right. He’d proven himself right already. But Anaxagoras was not ready for exactly what right meant. What did he compare this to? His Teleslate, receiving a thousand unsent messages at once? Millions of lifetimes and endings and decisions crashed into him, some familiar, most foreign. There he was, at the Grove – there he was, standing with Phainon at the Basin, facing off with another, different, more strange Phainon – there he was, dying at his comrade’s hands – 

And Aglaea. 

In the bare milliseconds left, he clutched at those memories like a drowning man. 

—

They both sat on the edge of the baths, desperately, stupidly drunk. 

The others had abandoned them. Hyacine lingered the longest (probably unnerved by exactly how soused her respected leader and professor both were), casting wary eyes back their direction from the other edge of the pool. But everyone else was tired of listening to the bickering, and so they vanished, in small groups, leaving Aglaea and Anaxagoras by themselves. 

“–Totally and completely wrong,” Aglaea snapped, draining her glass. Phainon had swapped it for water when he thought Anaxagoras wasn’t looking. “Honestly, your philosophies are such a hindrance to our journey—”

What was he supposed to say to that? They’d had this argument a thousand times. Truthfully, he could barely steer his mind back onto the Nousporist ideals. Aglaea shoved back a lock of curled blonde hair from her shoulder, green eyes offset by the drunken flush of her cheeks, and he thought of all the stories of Mnestia, bewitched by Cerces, endlessly confessing her love. 

“This is a cosmic joke,” he announced, and didn’t bother wrangling his slurring words. Aglaea stopped mid-rant, nose crinkling. 

“And what does that mean?”

Mnestia is supposed to be obsessed with Cerces , he thought. Not the other way around. That’s the joke. Reason upended by Romance. 

He didn’t explain it. He wrapped an arm around her waist, dragged her bodily to him, and kissed her as hard as he could manage. 

Aglaea did not fight him. Had he expected a fight? Perhaps. But she melted into his chest, head angled up towards him, and every ugly, possessive, wanting thing in his body activated at the same time. They kissed (if it could really be called that – heated and sloppy and not in their right minds) and kissed and kissed, and when finally Anaxagoras leaned his head back to grin at her, they were utterly alone in the baths. She smelled like a fabric store and bath salts and wine. Her body was soft to touch. There was no way to resist dragging his hand up her spine, relishing every little divot. 

The most beautiful woman in the world stared up at him as if she could see him, mouth set in a furious little line. 

“I’ll add that to my list of heretical thoughts,” he quipped, at a loss. 

“Anaxagoras,” she said, primly, “If you do not kiss me again when I am quite sober, I shall stomp on your foot with my heel.”

He tilted back his head and laughed.

—

A different lifetime. 

He sat in a chair, hunched double, face rested in his palm. Aglaea sent the shuttle back through the loom. Another centimeter of fabric. The pattern unfolded, careful and precise and geometric. 

This is the closest thing there is to magic , Anaxagoras thought. Weavers didn’t get enough credit. It was such an ordinary thing, the loom. But she could make mathematical theory dance into tiny little rows and cast it around herself into a new, beautiful thing, wearing another human achievement as adornment. What wasn’t magical about that? 

Aglaea cast the shuttle back through again and hummed to herself. 

Carefully, Anaxa placed his abandoned book down on his chair, rising as silently as he dared. He crept over on cat-like feet, trying to imitate Cifera’s cunning, his eye trained on her neck. 

Just as he was within distance of his target, poised to lean in and kiss her skin, Aglaea tilted her head oh-so-helpfully in the opposite direction. 

“You can see me.” It wasn’t a question. All of his cunning wind had gone out of him. She laughed, and it was so beautiful that he wondered if she could weave it as well. 

“You can’t be trusted to behave,” she chided, all sweetness and light. “Of course I’m watching you.”

“I thought you were focused on the loom.” And then, realizing the absurdity of it, Anaxagoras chuckled. “One working eye between the two of us, and you still were watching me.”

Aglaea cut her eyes in his direction, a smile tugging at the edge of her mouth. “Are you not going to kiss my neck, then?”

His brain sparkled. Anaxagoras ignored the sudden tightness in his pants, placing his hand against the wall. “Put down your shuttle.”

“I said kiss my neck, not–”

“I’m not going to savage you, woman, but now I need to kiss you properly, too. Put down your shuttle before I ruin something.” 

She rolled her eyes so far back he thought she might catch a glimpse of that glorious brain of hers. But she obeyed, and it was with far too much glee that Anaxagoras pressed his mouth into her neck, her shoulder, her jaw, and turned her finally to face him. 

—

Another lifetime. 

She lay in his arms. 

The bath around them was a sickening, diluted gold. Her blood seeped into every fiber of his clothing; a rank, metallic smell overpowered the fragrant steam. Screaming reverberated along the walls. The people of Okhema fled, wrapping towels around themselves, grappling with the scene they only saw glimpses of. 

“I’ve got you,” Anaxagoras rasped. He could feel the golden threads around him. They vibrated like the strings of an instrument caught mid-song, fighting to play on, play on, play on. “Stay. Stay, Aglaea, it isn’t your time, stay – ”

She couldn’t. That was the Flame Chase Journey, wasn’t it? They’d known from the first day how she would die. And no one could keep her here – not her thousands of golden threads, not Mnestia’s Coreflame, not his arms and the promises they’d made of forever when he slid that ring on her finger. She tried to sputter something and he choked down his own tears, brushing a hand over her mouth. “It’s okay, my weaver, it’s okay. Don’t —”

The thing that had killed her was on him next. Anaxagoras glimpsed a bit of eternity as sense left him and wondered if he could have her again the next time, if they could do it over, if he could save her. 

—

Fractions left in this life. 

His body dissolved as the Coreflame left him, and Anaxagoras laughed. 

He was right. 

There would be other chances. And if he was so fortunate, and if he could just grasp the truth with both hands for as long as possible (even as his mind wheeled into oblivion and other lifetimes and everything converged into black at once), Anaxagoras clung to the single coherent thought: Good. Then there is a chance I could love her. 

Mnestia, confessing her love to a Cerces already on her knees. The cosmic joke of his affections.  

Anaxagoras laughed, and he was gone. 

Chapter Text

Aglaea stood at the edge of the baths and waited for the end.  

Somewhere far below, the people of Okhema bathed and laughed and shouted. Their voices carried up the echoing walls. She could smell the lovely steam and feel the heat of the water all around her. Soon, she supposed, she would be plunged deep into it for herself. Perhaps she would enjoy one last dip before the end. 

Had she done enough? The Cleaners closed in around her. She could feel them passing through her golden threads, hesitant, cautious, waiting for the demigod to visit some horrible wrath upon them for even trying this. She still could, she supposed. Doom the people of Okhema. Burn away what little humanity she had left. Stay alive. 

That would render the entire Flame Chase pointless. 

Would Phainon manage? She hoped so. What about Tribbie and Trinon? They were her teachers; they, no doubt, would also get by. Cifera, Hyacine, the outlanders – all of them crowded through her mind at once, desperate for her focus, for any final decisions. Time, time, time. Oronyx had not seen fit to grant her more time. She needed to be grateful for all the years she’d bartered for beyond what she deserved. 

Unexpectedly, another name pushed into her mind, and–in fashion very much befitting the man it once stuck to – demanded all her focus. 

Anaxagoras . 

Someone nearest her drew a knife, prepared for the kill. 

She supposed she had time to think of trivial things rather than wait on proverbial pins and needles. 

What had he looked like, she wondered? She knew, to an extent. Mnestia’s golden threads had served as her faithful companion for years. She could see the colors of even the finest silks, observe even the most complex garments with precision. But she wondered how faithful their interpretation was. Did the God of Romance present things as they were? Or was everything more beautiful, more accentuated, highlighted in all of its natural loveliness until it bore only the most passing resemblance?

What an Anaxagoras thought. She could almost hear him laughing in her mind. I’ve corrupted you . 

Oh, how you wish you could corrupt me , she would’ve said back. You and your endless heresies. 

An exceptional scholar with an exceptional mind. He’d taught so many of them. Phainon and Castorice and Hyacine and countless other students passing through the Grove talked so highly of him. Truthfully, Aglaea couldn’t counter their praise with much, but she had her own teacher and no need of him. 

Not until now. Now, on the brink of death, she thought of Anaxagoras and longed to ask him a dozen questions.

When you knew you would die, were you afraid? Did it hurt? You laughed as you went. Was there joy in passing, or were you laughing at something else entirely? The Titans? Castorice? Those of us that went before? Were you delighted to be right? What awaits us in the River of Souls, Anaxagoras? Am I wrong to fear what is to come? Was there something between us there, at the very end, or has the Coreflame deluded my senses so deeply that I cannot recognize friendship from something entirely different?

The first knife plunged into her back. 

Wind. Wind, all around her. Not the West Wind – not yet – but gravity. Aglaea smacked into the baths below, her body unresponsive, embracing things as they were. Water rushed up her nose and burned in her sinuses. Screaming filtered through the thrashing bath. Oh. It had alarmed the people, hadn’t it? She’d forgotten it might. 

“You’ll only get clarity for a few moments,” came a familiar voice. Deep, rich, a little condescending. She knew that voice. “ Try to enjoy it .”

Aglaea almost asked aloud if he was there. Of all the people to fetch her to death—Anaxagoras? She’d expected Hysilens, or Trianne, or Castorice herself. 

“Relax ,” he (or her dying, scrambling brain) said, and she nearly laughed at him. He wanted her to relax her way through dying? She couldn’t relax her way through living . 

But then she saw it. Or perhaps seeing was the wrong sense. Everything rushed inward, like all her golden threads at the same time and a thousand more. The chaos of the water around her swirled away. Dozens and then hundreds and then thousands and then millions of lifetimes all at once, a true sensory overload, a hungry, howling thing that she could not wrangle or make sense of her questions for. 

She saw all her deaths. She saw the recursions. She glimpsed for the most fleeting of moments a truth – a nonsensical, absurd, utterly infuriating Truth – and Anaxagoras laughed and gripped her waist, dragging her backwards into whatever experience she was presently having while dying. 

“ I said to try and enjoy it .”

Thousands of lifetimes where they’d kissed and fucked and loved one another hazed across her thoughts. Aglaea nearly laughed, too. Of course. Of course the man who infuriated her the most took it upon himself to love her. An inversion of the legends. Hadn’t Mnestia begged for Cerces love?

“ I thought it was funny, too .”

Aglaea wanted to say it wasn’t funny . Whatever it was, funny wasn’t the word for it. But all her perversion died on her tongue and she let her head loll back into Anaxagoras (or perhaps just the illusion of him, who truly knew). “I hate that you were right.”

Anaxagoras brushed a kiss across her forehead. It seared like the Coreflame. “I look forward to you challenging every thought in my head in every other lifetime we receive. I respect you too much to hold this over you too long.”

Good , she wanted to say. But then the rushing darkness pressed in around her, and Aglaea felt the world reset.